DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Concealed Carry?

Quote:

---

The earth is a much better place for CRIMINALS when people don't carry guns

---

Quote:

---

Carrying a gun brings a new level towards the idea of taking responsibility for personal security.

I don't believe that we should be reliant on the Gov't. to protect us from people who want to rape/rob/murder us. I think that we as a people should be able to take measures to protect ourselves from becoming victims---and concealed carry is a great way to not become a victim.

Do you like relying on the government for personal security---I sure don't.

---

Nicely said.

I live in an area where cops take reports about crimes that have been committed - as do most people. Cops don't stop crime, they investigate crimes.

Investigations are a lot easier on cops when there is a body, or at least a blood trail.

Ban guns, the criminals will be the only ones with guns.

Quote:

---

gun is a tool of a cimrinal, and not the cause of the crime, then and only then will we be able to start somewhere.

---

Quote:

---

You almost got it right. The earth is a much better place for CRIMINALS when people don't carry guns. There, fist it for you. You enjoy trying to get someone wanting to rape and murder your wife to hold hands and sing songs of peace. I'll take care of my family with the Glock I have a license to carry.

---

Quote:

---

Ban guns, the criminals will be the only ones with guns.

---

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

You almost got it right. The earth is a much better place for CRIMINALS when people don't carry guns. There, fist it for you. You enjoy trying to get someone wanting to rape and murder your wife to hold hands and sing songs of peace. I'll take care of my family with the Glock I have a license to carry.

---

Now what about criminals that start carrying guns only because normal citizens are carrying guns? People always bring up that argument but it does work the other way as well.. Conceal carry may also breed more criminals that carry guns who may be more reckless or more apt to use the gun to where they may not have before.. Just depends on how badly criminals want to commit crimes.. Hopefully criminals won't start to ask questions after they shoot. But anyways, I am just saying.... That argument can work in the other direction.. Because having guns on the other side may just make for more brazen criminals, too.

---

Quote:

---

John R. Lott, Jr. is a resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute. He was previously the John M. Olin Visiting Law and Economics Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.

Question: What does the title mean: More Guns, Less Crime?

Lott: States with the largest increases in gun ownership also have the largest drops in violent crimes. Thirty-one states now have such laws—called "shall-issue" laws. These laws allow adults the right to carry concealed handguns if they do not have a criminal record or a history of significant mental illness.

Question: It just seems to defy common sense that crimes likely to involve guns would be reduced by allowing more people to carry guns. How do you explain the results?

Lott: Criminals are deterred by higher penalties. Just as higher arrest and conviction rates deter crime, so does the risk that someone committing a crime will confront someone able to defend him or herself. There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate—as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.

Concealed handgun laws reduce violent crime for two reasons. First, they reduce the number of attempted crimes because criminals are uncertain which potential victims can defend themselves. Second, victims who have guns are in a much better position to defend themselves.

Question: What is the basis for these numbers?

Lott: The analysis is based on data for all 3,054 counties in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994.

Question: Your argument about criminals and deterrence doesn't tell the whole story. Don't statistics show that most people are killed by someone they know?

Lott: You are referring to the often-cited statistic that 58 percent of murder victims are killed by either relatives or acquaintances. However, what most people don't understand is that this "acquaintance murder" number also includes gang members killing other gang members, drug buyers killing drug pushers, cabdrivers killed by customers they picked up for the first time, prostitutes and their clients, and so on. "Acquaintance" covers a wide range of relationships. The vast majority of murders are not committed by previously law-abiding citizens. Ninety percent of adult murderers have had criminal records as adults.

Question: But how about children? In March of this year [1998] four children and a teacher were killed by two school boys in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Won't tragedies like this increase if more people are allowed to carry guns? Shouldn't this be taken into consideration before making gun ownership laws more lenient?

Lott: The horrific shooting in Arkansas occurred in one of the few places where having guns was already illegal. These laws risk creating situations in which the good guys cannot defend themselves from the bad ones. I have studied multiple victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1995. These were incidents in which at least two or more people were killed and or injured in a public place; in order to focus on the type of shooting seen in Arkansas, shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery, were excluded. The effect of "shall-issue" laws on these crimes has been dramatic. When states passed these laws, the number of multiple-victim shootings declined by 84 percent. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90 percent, and injuries by 82 percent.

For other types of crimes, I find that both children as well as adults are protected when law-abiding adults are allowed to carry concealed handguns.

Finally, after extensively studying the number of accidental shootings, there is no evidence that increasing the number of concealed handguns increases accidental shootings. We know that the type of person who obtains a permit is extremely law-abiding and possibly they are extremely careful in how they take care of their guns. The total number of accidental gun deaths each year is about 1,300 and each year such accidents take the lives of 200 children 14 years of age and under. However, these regrettable numbers of lives lost need to be put into some perspective with the other risks children face. Despite over 200 million guns owned by between 76 to 85 million people, the children killed is much smaller than the number lost through bicycle accidents, drowning, and fires. Children are 14.5 times more likely to die from car accidents than from accidents involving guns.

Question: Wouldn't allowing concealed weapons increase the incidents of citizens attacking each other in tense situations? For instance, sometimes in traffic jams or accidents people become very hostile—screaming and shoving at one another. If armed, might people shoot each other in the heat of the moment?

Lott: During state legislative hearings on concealed-handgun laws, possibly the most commonly raised concern involved fears that armed citizens would attack each other in the heat of the moment following car accidents. The evidence shows that such fears are unfounded. Despite millions of people licensed to carry concealed handguns and many states having these laws for decades, there has only been one case where a person with a permit used a gun after a traffic accident and even in that one case it was in self-defense.

Question: Violence is often directed at women. Won't more guns put more women at risk?

Lott: Murder rates decline when either more women or more men carry concealed handguns, but a gun represents a much larger change in a woman's ability to defend herself than it does for a man. An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than an additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men.

Question: Aren't you playing into people's fears and prejudices though? Don't politicians pass these shall-issue laws to mollify middle-class white suburbanites anxious about the encroachment of urban minority crime?

Lott: I won't speculate about motives, but the results tell a different story. High crime urban areas and neighborhoods with large minority populations have the greatest reductions in violent crime when citizens are legally allowed to carry concealed handguns.

Question: What about other countries? It's often argued that Britain, for instance, has a lower violent crime rate than the USA because guns are much harder to obtain and own.

Lott: The data analyzed in this book is from the USA. Many countries, such as Switzerland, New Zealand, Finland, and Israel have high gun-ownership rates and low crime rates, while other countries have low gun ownership rates and either low or high crime rates. It is difficult to obtain comparable data on crime rates both over time and across countries, and to control for all the other differences across the legal systems and cultures across countries. Even the cross country polling data on gun ownership is difficult to assess, because ownership is underreported in countries where gun ownership is illegal and the same polls are never used across countries.

Question: This is certainly controversial and there are certain to be counter-arguments from those who disagree with you. How will you respond to them?

Lott: Some people do use guns in horrible ways, but other people use guns to prevent horrible things from happening to them. The ultimate question that concerns us all is: Will allowing law-abiding citizens to own guns save lives? While there are many anecdotal stories illustrating both good and bad uses of guns, this question can only be answered by looking at data to find out what the net effect is.

All of chapter seven of the book is devoted to answering objections that people have raised to my analysis. There are of course strong feelings on both sides about the issue of gun ownership and gun control laws. The best we can do is to try to discover and understand the facts. If you agree, or especially if you disagree with my conclusions I hope you'll read the book carefully and develop an informed opinion.

---

Quote:

---

I've done a decent amount of research on this.. here's a good read:

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgcon.html

Some highlights:

Quote:

---

In 1987, when Florida enacted such legislation, critics warned that the "Sunshine State" would become the "Gunshine State." Contrary to their predictions, homicide rates dropped faster than the national average. Further, through 1997, only one permit holder out of the over 350,000 permits issued, was convicted of homicide. (Source: Kleck, Gary Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, p 370. Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York, 1997.) If the rest of the country behaved as Florida's permit holders did, the U.S. would have the lowest homicide rate in the world.

David Kopel, Research Director at the Independence Institute comments on Florida's concealed carry experience:

"What we can say with some confidence is that allowing more people to carry guns does not cause an increase in crime. In Florida, where 315,000 permits have been issued, there are only five known instances of violent gun crime by a person with a permit. This makes a permit-holding Floridian the cream of the crop of law-abiding citizens, 840 times less likely to commit a violent firearm crime than a randomly selected Floridian without a permit." ("More Permits Mean Less Crime..." Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1996, Monday, p. B-5)

---

Quote:

---

John Lott and David Mustard, in connection with the University of Chicago Law School, examining crime statistics from 1977 to 1992 for all U.S. counties, concluded that the thirty-one states allowing their residents to carry concealed, had significant reductions in violent crime.

---

Basically, facts don't support your position. I could dig up some of the other stuff I've read about the effects in different areas or from slightly less-biased sources, but honestly, it all points in the same direction.

---

Quote:

---

The following, from the National Rifle Association (NRA), is unfortunately an example of a deceptive comparison:

"States with Right To Carry laws have lower violent crime rates. On average, they have a 24% lower total violent crime rate, a 19% lower homicide rate, a 39% lower robbery rate, and a 19% lower aggravated assault rate, compared to other states and the District of Columbia. The nine states with the lowest violent crime rates are all Right To Carry states. (Data: FBI)"
(Cited from the NRA's Website: 1/20/2001) (Similar, but more recent misleading numbers: Fact Sheet: The Right to Carry. Also presented similarly in NRA Firearms Facts 2003.
The tables below, using the same FBI data as the NRA, show that in 1998, the shall-issue states, rather than having a "24 percent lower violent crime rate," had a rate that was only 8 percent lower than the may-issue states and the District of Columbia. And, rather than having 19% fewer homicides, the shall-issue states actually had a higher homicide rate. The may-issue states and the District of Columbia had 13.4% fewer homicides.

---

Quote:

---

Cops don't stop crime, they investigate crimes.

---

Quote:

---

I have a conceal carry license and to be perfectly honest with you, it is pretty useless. There really isn't a need to walk around with one, and you can't enter just about any public or private building with one, the only real good it has if you happen to leave the clip in the gun while traveling to a shooting range or something like that. Seriously it's overall a waste and really all it does is makes some things easier.

---

Quote:

---

I would keep one of the shotguns...the best home defense gun a person can have.

---

Yeah, I plan to keep one of them...just have to figure out which. Arch helped me with the one we thought may have some value, but it turns out it's in pretty rough shape. So, we'll see what someone can tell me about the others and one will end up living with me and seeing some use.

I used to love going to Turkey Shoots with my Dad and clay pigeon shooting with some friends, so I'm looking forward to that kind of thing again.

Quote:

---

i just bought a 59 ought, 33 carb, double slide action. with a wood grain.

---

With a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time . . .

Quote:

---

I should also add that up until recently, the thought of owning any gun wasn't something I ever felt I'd do... For the first time in my life, I'm considering it. God I hate that feeling.

---

Quote:

---

I'm not gonna get into this on gun, yes I carry, but I carry only in certain situations, I do feel part of the responcibility of carring a gun is knowing when to leave it & when to carry it.

---

Quote:

---

I've seen people who have the right to carry who shouldnt even have the right to tie thier own shoes but they passed the class, & they have the same rights as others, I just wouldnt & dont wanna take a chance when it comes to thier judgement.

having the right to carry dosent give one the right to intimidate or the right to kill, it gives you the right to protect yourself or your family on last resort, some that carry dont understand that.

---